But for movies I have recently stumbled upon a loophole in Apple’s website which allows you to view full, unreleased movies absolutely free. Now the movies tend to be slightly edited, losing between 5 and 98 mins off their intended run time. And often tend to have a stirring audio track placed over them, the the extent that you can often now even hear what is being said. Most interestingly though for these cuts of the movie they seem to show the scenes out of order and often with little or no context.

Still though it’s free so you can’t really complain.

Below I have complied some of my word based review letters for some recently viewed condesnsed movietory finds.

AVATAR

Avatar has apparently been in devleopment since 1994 and was originally meant to be released just after Titantic. Considering the amount of time that has obviously gone into it it is a little dissapointing to find it having a run time of 3 and a half minutes. The movie opens up with Sam “The Face Worthington opening his eyes and realising he is in wheelchair. Sam, or Jake Sully as he pretends to be called is seen wheeling his beautiful body through a bar showing sports. We, the viewer, are left to ponder whether this is how he lost the use of his legs. From watching too much sports. Sam then meets Kevin Spacey around the critical 17 second mark of the movie. Sam is hanging around the men’s toilets where Spaceman asks him if he wants a new start on a new planet where he can “make a difference”. Obviously Sam’s parents never warned him about making promises to men in the toilets of bars cos a flash of a planet show followed by a shot of a spaceship later and Sam is seen making a difference by wheeling down a ramp in his wheelchair while all the other marines spint away on their legs.

After this we are trated to a harrowing shot of Sam, in wheelchair and complete with a scuba diving mask (I think the allusion here is that he thnks through out the whole film that they are underwater). Sam wheels on by a giant robot and the obvious question we are supposed to ask is, “why can’t they make him a robochair?”. Maybe that’s in the sequel.

The next 20 seconds of the movie really zip along. It feels like barley 18 seconds. We are introduced to the scarred army general who crucially informs the team that they are “no longer in Kansas”. Presumably the prequel where they slaughter the indigenous people of the Sunflower State will be released one day.

The movie then introduces of the hidouesly disfigured sidekick of Sam in the movie. Although slightly human in form they are clearly meant to make us feel nauseoues and dislike them. But enough about Michelle Rodriguez. The Na’vi soon show up and start shouting at things. Then Giovanni Ribisi injects some much needed storyline into proceeding.

Turns out the Na’vi have these rocks that can spin around in the air. A sure fire Christmas must have toy, Ribisi and his evil consortium want to take it all. But

Current Season: Season 1
Who’s in it?: A bunch of wooden idiots
Worth watching?: Not at all
Why are you watching it then?: I’ve no idea…

When I first heard about Flashforward back at the beginning of the summer I instantly had very high hopes for it. The premise – the entire (well almost entire), world blacks out for 137 seconds and in that time they see a “flashforward” of their lives in about 6 months time – was so solid that it seemed the show could not fail. It practically writes itself. I remember thinking that the only way they could possible fluff this one was if they created soulless uninteresting characters, hired planks to play them and filmed it with the style and direction of a Milk Tray advert. Sadly my flashforward turned out to be pretty much on the money

The cracks appeared in the foundations of Flashforward right from the beginning. The opening event of the blackout was remarkably underwhelming. Everything looked cheap and the CGI was pretty awful. By comparison with the flawless “you are here” feel of the Lost opening scene the gulf between the shows could not be more evident. If ABC are banking on this being the “new Lost”, which their blatant Lost reference would tend to imply then they have a lot of work to do.

The premise, as solid as it was, was only going to be as strong as the characters who lived through it. The cast of characters are sadly a truly forgettable bunch, to the extent that I can barely remember anyone’s name. Any conversations I’ve seen about Flashforward on forums are populated with characters like “The asian guy from Star Trek”, “Raplh Fiennes idiot brother”, “The black guy”, “The hobbit” and “the other black guy”. The way in which they investigate, or more accurately don’t investigate the phenomenon prevents any buy in as a viewer as no body on the show thinks is a way that can easily be related to. Unless you’re a moron.

Ok so everyone’s seen a glimpse of their future. The FIRST thing that should have happened was people should have tried to do something that would make their future impossible. But no, everyone went around thinking “oh bugger I guess I really am going to leave my husband, better just go along with it”. One guy, “the other black guy”, decided to test this as his flash had him finding out a woman he hit with his car had died. Yeouch, what’s a guy to do? Lose your driver’s license so you can’t drive on that day? Sell you car? Blind yourself? No, of course the only logical thing to do is to KILL YOURSELF! So other black guy climbs to the top of the FBI building and faceplants himself off it. I was almost expecting him to land on the woman but no, splay, dead. So now we know the flashes are not set in stone and are only things which may occur unless you change them…. Great you broke the premise ABC, now there is no sense of impending disaster, or at least a sense that the story is actually leading anywhere.

I’m gonna round up now because to be honest I’ll be stunned if this show lasts more than a season anyway. Plus i don’t like having the feeling that I have put more thought into this show than the people whose job it is to do so.